Abstract
n 1910 and 1911, Maria Renteria, Sara Estela Ramirez, and Astrea3 redefined who the woman4 was and what her role in the borderlands of Texas and Mexico could be. As contributors to La Crdnica, a Spanish-language newspaper based in Laredo, Texas, these three women called their female readers to refuse essentialist definitions that described women as second-class, subservient, and apolitical.5 The writings of Renteria, Ramirez, and Astrea stood in contrast to such constructions as they inscribed women as intelligent and honorable-as women who could, and indeed should, engage in and change the world around them. Renteria, Ramirez, and Astrea wrote to shift old and shape new definitions, but even as they shared this goal, each writer composed a different Mexican woman for her readers. Astrea persuaded her readers to reassess their education and their place outside the home in her two articles To the Woman Who